Rockhounds intro ...

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No doubt you are here on this site because you, like us, are admirers of beauty. In fact I have spoken of this connection in my most recent book “Rockhound: Opening the Treasure Chest”. My book sees treasure as glittering gems and crystals, but also those components that keep our modern world afloat. There are rare earths in the treasure chest. In Ontario that chest is filled to capacity. The ground that we tread is underlain by obscure metals and the usual favorites of gold, platinum and gem crystals. 

 

The so-called critical minerals have at times replaced diamond and gold prospecting. A good portion of central and eastern Ontario's mineral history has been a transition where the same mines have been reworked for many different minerals, phosphates, mica, feldspar and uranite. Now there are the rare earths. Lithium, Columbite and Tantalite are considered by some as better than sapphires. No cell phone or piece of high tech gadgetry is possible without a tantalum capacitor. China controls the market. Coltan, the tantalite ore, is mined by children in the Congo and without our own supply we sit hostage to those who control the pipeline. Admittedly down at the bottom of Ontario’s treasure chest there’s tantalum and other undiscovered mineral surprises, we just have to look – trust me, we are doing that!

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I often see tantalite in the geological reports of Ontario’s old uranium mines. Uranium was hot in the 1950’s. Tantalum and lithium were considered worthless. It is changing technologies that drive the mineral world and define from an industrial perspective what is treasure and what is trash. Flipping over to the rockhound treasure hunt, it is color, size, rarity and perfection of form that make a crystal a “keeper” or a “tosser”. Admittedly, we at Dark Star have become a little spoiled. What we set aside would be considered by most to be well worth keeping. It is necessary to remind each other that our normal is not the “normal” of most collectors. We only keep and sell at the upper end of the market. Crystals dug from our Bear Lake II claim are larger, less expensive and as beautiful as any you will encounter as a collector.

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Our site adjacent the old “Bear Lake Diggings” plays host to a great variety of minerals. Most commonly they come as silicate crystals in 1 variety or another. Pyroxenites, amphiboles and feldspars are relatively abundant. Monazite, edenite and uranite are less commonly found. Sometimes titinite is speckled through an amphibole prism and unless you look carefully its possible to pass a matrix off as a mix of more common specimens. And then the mystery that is the north claim. We are finding quartz between clear and speckled with "Martian Blueberries" and deep purple amethyst with large orange pumpkins. We don’t have time to look at everything. You may well find all kinds of rarities in our matrix specimens, and the quartz, well it's one of a kind.

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It is possible to pluck an amphibole from the sucking mud, but of its trace elements we can never be quite sure. Admittedly It’s easy to determine that you have an amphibole, but the possibilities of content, trace minerals etc. are quite astounding. At this time there are 72 known varieties of amphibole, but why would the discoveries stop there? Who’s to say that what comes from Dark Star is not entirely new? Further analysis of a greenish - grey crystal from the Bear Lake Diggings, revealed an entirely new mineral specimen. They called it “ferri-fluoro-katophorite”, though it is not the only recently discovered mineral in the area of our claim.  We are but a stone’s throw from Bear Lake and it was there that they also made the discovery of “Nioboaeschynite”, an orthorhombic crystal with ytterium as part of its make-up. Both Bear Lake and Dark Star share the same geology of Calcium vein-dyke fissures. What occurred in Bear Lake’s famous fissures will invariably occur at Dark Star’s claim as well.

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In truth all of these unusual elements mix in the geology of Monmouth County’s vein-dyke fissures. Ytterium, a rare earth, is found in the fluor-apatite that’s so often lifted from our mine. Just the other day my partner (Mark) lifted an 8 inch long crystal from the fissure we call “The Pre-dug Pit”, and the week before Jeff Collens found something much the same.

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What went in to make Bear Lake’s incredible crystals have gone equally into the content of our Dark Star crystals. Without knowing exactly which of the amphiboles we are selling, we put them up for sale or bid. We could be marketing something that nobody has ever heard of, its hard to tell when we lift a muddy specimen from the earth. We are explorers and treasure hunters, for us the search is a good part of our satisfaction. Every find we make, and we make them several times an hour, we still have that same surge of adrenaline in discovery. Lab analysis would be required to determine exactly what it is that we’ve got, but if its something that we find quite wonderous you can bet you’ll see it up for sale. Sometimes in discovery we are inspired by the wonder of creation and in those cases we’ll name the crystal as a singular and unique individual and we’ll open it to bidding – though sometimes price might not be the only consideration.

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Typically, what we lift from the ground we recognize as one of several possibilities, sometimes its a amphibole or pyroxenite. A quick look reveals an almost square cross-section to the pyroxenite due to its 87 and 93 degree cleavage, whereas amphibole is more diamond shaped in cross section with cleavages of 60 and 120 degrees. At other times it could be an apatite prism, a tetragonal zircon crystal, or little cube of uranite.

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Apatite is typically green, it’s one of the more prolific mineral species in our fissures. There are many small Eastern Ontario Mines that once tapped the land for apatite and the phosphorus that it gave to crops, but as we get down deeper the apatite’s transparency and color improves. We expect that over time our crystal offerings will improve. These stubby apatite prisms are also a significant source of neodymium and praseodymium, the main component in super strong green technology magnets. You can typically see an apatite crystal in one of the trashed places where rockhounds gather, but what we sell is something that we’d keep ourselves if we were collecting as we used to.

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The point is that although we are right adjacent to bear Lake, we are not Bear Lake and as we’ve found, each fissure is uniquely different. Nobody before us has ever properly tapped the Dark Star Claim. When we first ranged over the land it was riven with shallow hollows. We could see that there was more beneath the surface as great trees grew into what was apparently a soil covering of no more than about a foot. First sign of a breeze you’d expect to see such trees topple sideways, but they don’t, their roots have found purchase deep within our fissures. Beneath the leaves and humus there are small holes that we called vents rising up from a calcite nutrient flow from several hundred million years ago. Digging in those vents we were able to quickly determine that their throats were encrusted with crystal matrixs’ of unbroken splendor.

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We call our mining company “Dark Star” because of the mystery that we face in our crystal harvest. We never know how deep a fissure goes, what its content consists of, and what incredible discoveries the property’s voids and tunnels lead to. Yes, I get it, it's kinda gothic sci-fi, but at 2.30 in the morning with Mitch's handiwork in full use and Pink Floyd blasting it seemed like the fit for us.

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For our field identifications it is the crystal system that leads us in the right direction. There are seven systems (some say 6) in the world of crystallography, each with its specific axis and relevant angles. Uranite, like fluorite, garnet and diamond falls into the isometric crystal system, they all have axis running at a 90 degree angle to each other and intersecting crystal faces at equal distances from the center. Well that diagnosis of the system can be quite difficult as every mineral then falls into one or another of 48 distinctive forms. Forms can be open or closed, but in the end it is a set of faces that are related to each other by symmetry.

Most simply put, the octahedron of the isometric system has 8 faces and when rotated around a central axis they repeat themselves 4 times. A diamond might occur as an octahedron, but it could also be seen as a cube as both cube and octahedron are of the isometric system. Now look at the lovely cranberry purple of an almandine garnet, it too is of the isometric crystal system and usually presents itself in “Rhombic Dodecahedron” form.

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Closed forms encase a space. Think of an octahedron, its 8 sides enclose a space. Now think of a 6 sided prism, it is of a form where the 6 sides can be rotated around an axis and they will be observed to repeat themselves as each face is turned to the observer. The prism is an open space. If you were to pour water into the form it would flow out the bottom. Another open form would be needed to close the prism; this is where the “pinacoid” or “dome” come in. Domes are comprised of 2 faces related to each other over a mirror plane. Imagine 2 playing cards set on a table and sloped equally toward each other. Between these 2 cards a mirror could be set and it would reflect the first card as though it were the second. Set a dome at either end of the prism and you enclose it. Combining a pinacoid with a prism it would appear as two faces that are parallel to each other and at either end of the prism.

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If you were to find a treasure in the traditional sense it would be a chest that when spilled open would empty gold coins and a cascade of faceted or cut crystals that come from places just like our claim. We have world-class specimens of rare and wonderful crystals. Much as you might buy a common amphibole like fluor-richterite from us, you might also get something that’s totally unheard of. We can’t lab-test our every crystal. We extract and sell upon the premise that if its something that you see value in for its appearance then buy it for your collection. However, that amphibole might actually be masquerading as something entirely unique from both of our expectations.

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Dark Star Mines opens a world of mystery to the Ontario rock hound. This            is what treasure hunting is all about. The treasure that typically springs to          mind might be pirate gold or emeralds sunk in a Spanish galleon. Here at Dark Star your treasure comes in a different form, it’s all about rarity and purity of the crystal shape. It’s the luck of the draw as they say. As we’ve found with a little bit of knowledge and sound reasoning you can tip the odds in your favor. Our treasure is purely natural. It literally embodies both mystery and beauty             from the beginning of time. We treat our crystals and the land from which           we draw them with the respect that they are due. Know that our harvesting           is done with an eye to being low-impact and that our mines are as                  much about sharing our fascination with the natural world as they are             about earning a living.